All Light News Stephen A.

Grant

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Pogo1

A STRIKING FEATURE of G. I. Gurdjieff’s teaching is the

cosmic scale of history, referring back to ancient
civilizations thousands of years ago and pointing
toward the evolution of humanity in future millennia.
He and his fellow Seekers of Truth had rediscovered
the forgotten science of seeing reality, and he had
passed on the ideas and inner practice to his closest
followers, P.D.Ouspensky and Jeanne de Salzmann.
Nevertheless, with a cosmic perspective, versed in the
history of early Christianity, he knew that the
appearance of the Fourth Way would be a process
drawn out over several generations.

Toward the end of his life, Gurdjieff announced to his

followers that he was entrusting the “continuation of
my work” to Mme. de Salzmann.2 What he intended,
however, only she knew. He had not reopened the
Institute closed in 1924, and had only alluded to
possibly organizing branches in Europe and America.
But in his last years he had encouraged American and
English followers to visit him in Paris, and, perhaps
more signi?cantly, introduced more than one hundred
dance exercises or “movements” to improvised classes
in Paris and New York. The scale of the endeavor
suggests a de?nite aim for the future, which he must
have discussed with Mme. de Salzmann. In fact, the
speed with which she organized Gurdjieff centers
within two years of his death indicates a
predetermined plan. These “houses of work” in Paris,
New York, London, and Caracas, each with a formal
designation as a foundation, society, or institute, are
often referred to as the Gurdjieff foundations.

The publication of Gurdjieff’s writings was an

important part of this plan. Four months before his
death he formally assigned all rights to publish his
literary work to Mme. de Salzmann, including his
magnum opus, BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON.
Written in the 1920s, prematurely announced in 1933
and then postponed, the English text of the book was
ready for publication, brilliantly edited by Gurdjieff’s
English pupil A.R.Orage. Gurdjieff admitted it was a
“rough diamond” deserving re?nement,3 but he
insisted before his death that the book be launched
then, with any revision made later. Accordingly, it was
published in 1950, and over the next forty years
developed a devoted following among Gurdjief?ans and
scholars.

After Mme. de Salzmann died in 1990, the original

BEELZEBUB went out of print. It was replaced in 1992
by a revised version, promoted by Triangle

Today, both books are available and widely read, and

enough time has passed to consider the competing
arguments dispassionately.

Editions, the publishing company for the foundations,

as intended to make the prose style easier to read. The
revision came as a shock to devotees of the original
edition, provoking outrage inside and outside the
foundations in America and England. Claims were made
that the revision distorted Gurdjieff’s teaching, even
that the original version was written in a unique style
invented by Gurdjieff which, as an esoteric
“legominism,” could not be changed without deforming
its meaning. Supporters of the second book responded
with their own exaggeration— that the ?rst edition was
inauthentic because its writing style could not have
been approved by the author. As a result of the
dispute, Triangle republished the original edition and
then let the revised book go out of print, relaunching it
only in 2006. Nevertheless, twenty years after it
began, the disagreement remains unresolved, a source
of unhappy division inside and outside the foundations.

Today, both books are available and widely read, and

enough time has passed to consider the competing
arguments dispassionately. In his paper Professor Paul
Beekman Taylor presents a persuasive case for the
authenticity of the original version. Without
disagreeing, I hope to show why the revised version is
also authentic, that is, worthy of respect as authorized
by Gurdjieff. It is, I believe, time to respectfully
recognize the merits of both books and bring closure to
the dispute to end the “Beelzebub Wars” and move
beyond the sense of “us and them.”

AS THE LEADING historian on the collaboration

between Gurdjieff and Orage, Professor Taylor has
done us all a service with his scholarship, presenting an
authoritative picture of the heroic work that produced
the original English text.4 Particularly memorable is
the image of the Orages and Edith Taylor working
feverishly with Gurdjieff in January and February 1928
to prepare a revised English version that Orage took
back to New York. It was substantially this version,
completed the following year, that was read aloud in
Paris and New York in the late 1940s, and that
Gurdjieff approved for the ?rst publication after he
died. Professor Taylor has made a convincing case that
the 1950 English edition should be regarded historically
as the ?rst authorized version of the book. I agree with
him that, in speaking of the English editions, we should
call it the “original BEELZEBUB.”

With respect to the 1992 English edition, Professor

Taylor has dismissed it as unauthorized5 and now
suggests that the revision was neither necessary nor
appropriate. He regards the French text published in
1956 as a continuation of the process of translating
from the English begun in 1929, and then discounts as
unnecessary the 1992 revision based on the French.
Close examination of the different texts brings only
confusion. The acknowledgment basing the French
translation on the “original manuscript” is unclear. It
appears to refer to the extant 1933 Russian text, but
that document is a typescript, not a manuscript, and,
in his view, cannot be deemed “original” because it
was made after the 1928 English version. Professor
Taylor demonstrates that all of this is a “muddle,” a
confused mess.

It is interesting that Professor Taylor attributes the

confusion to French in?uence and ignores the
contribution of Gurdjieff—the Arch•Muddler, who
openly delighted in exaggeration to discourage being
taken literally and who “might say one thing one day
and something altogether different tomorrow.”6 As a
lawyer, approaching the revision as a matter of the
author’s intent and legal authorization, I am primarily
interested in what Gurdjieff meant in his prefatory
note in THE HERALD OF COMING GOOD: “The original is
written in Russian and Armenian.”7 He wrote in the
present tense in a book published in 1933. For me, this
is strong evidence that he regarded the contemporary
Russian typescript as the master copy, even though he
had authorized publication of the English book.

One may admire Professor Taylor for his research and

insights on Gurdjieff and Orage, particularly for his
uncompromising “pursuit of facts that serve
biographical ‘truth.’”8 Here, I would respectfully
suggest there are several facts that support the
conclusion that the 1992 revision was also authorized
by Gurdjieff.

THE AUTHORIZED REVISION

ALTHOUGH MANY of us marvel at Gurdjieff’s verbal

dexterity, especially in BEELZEBUB’S TALES, the clarity
and precision of his expression have gone largely
unnoticed, obscured by the variety of his writing styles
in English. I accidentally stumbled upon this fact thirty
years ago when translating an unpublished text that
Mme. de Salzmann said came from Gurdjieff.9 Struck
by the precision of the language, I remarked to
Madame’s daughter Nathalie de Etievan how pleased
Gurdjieff must have been that Ouspensky was such a
highly skilled writer, able to edit and present
Gurdjieff’s words with such clarity and precision.
Nathalie, who as a child had practically been brought
up by Gurdjieff at the Prieuré, forcefully contradicted
me: “No! That was exactly how Mr. Gurdjieff talked!”
My wife, who was present, and I were taken aback by
her vehemence; we, like many others, had assumed
that Ouspensky re?ned Gurdjieff’s language. More
recently, in reexamining IN SEARCH OF THE
MIRACULOUS, I noted Ouspensky’s statement that he
liked Gurdjieff’s “manner of speaking, which was
careful and precise,”10 and realized that, as a
journalist and exacting writer himself, he could never
have “laundered” Gurdjieff’s words and then
presented them as verbatim quotations. Of course,
Nathalie and Ouspensky were commenting on
Gurdjieff’s precision in speaking Russian.

Gurdjieff would, almost certainly, have applied his

discrimination in literary expression to BEELZEBUB,
which he regarded as his magnum opus. Olga de
Hartmann, who typed the initial Russian drafts of the
book, wrote that he revised his writing again and
again, sometimes as often as ten times until he found
the formulation he wished.11 Although he purported to
have discarded this initial text when he reworked the
book in 1927, it is most likely that signi?cant portions
were retained. However feverish the pace, the
exercise with Orage in January and February 1928
could not have rewritten an entire book of more than
one thousand pages. In any case, Gurdjieff had four
years to review and complete the Russian version
before announcing in 1933 that the original was written
in Russian.

Given his penchant for precision, it is dif?cult to

believe that Gurdjieff would simply accept as de?nitive
an English text that he had hurriedly worked out with
Orage, especially when he could barely read that
language. Mme. de Hartmann remarked that, in
working with Orage in the 1920s, Gurdjieff “did not
speak much English,”12 and Nicholas Stjernvall
summed up his own observations over twenty years
later:

The master had an enormous linguistic handicap which

prevented him from expressing himself as he would
wish. It is true that he mastered Armenian and Russian
perfectly, although he spoke with a decided Caucasian
accent…. But, alas, his knowledge of English and
French was restricted to a scant few words and
expressions.”13

IN 2005, when Triangle was about to relaunch the

revised BEELZEBUB, we were debating how to describe
the extent of Gurdjieff’s endorsement of the Orage
translation. At this point, the most knowledgeable
resources were Nathalie de Etievan, who, at the age of
thirty, attended many readings of the book in
Gurdjieff’s presence, and Margaret Flinsch, who, at
forty, was one of the readers. I asked each separately
whether Gurdjieff could have approved Orage’s writing
style when passages were read aloud in his presence.
They gave the same answer in substantially the same
words: “Of course not. His English was not good
enough.”

Mme. de Salzmann wrote that before he died Gurdjieff

gave her instructions on publishing his writings,14 and,
more speci?cally, she recounted to me that he told her
to revise BEELZEBUB. This explains why, instead of
simply translating the English book, she spent ?ve years
producing the French edition based on the Russian
text. Then, after it was completed, she undertook to
revise the English edition to include the changes made
in the French, coming herself to the United States
during summers in the 1960s to participate in the
project. Given her total devotion to Gurdjieff, she
would never have presumed to revise his published
writing without his authorization.

For me, a lawyer, the critical issue is whether the

revision of BEELZEBUB’S TALES was legally authorized
by Gurdjieff. Here, for once, the actions of the
Arch•Muddler all point to the same conclusion. He
wrote in Russian and Armenian, and had translated into
Russian the English passages developed with Orage in
early 1928. A master of Russian who could barely read
English, he regarded the Russian version as the
authoritative text, and announced in HERALD that the
original “is written” in Russian. A skilled writer of
precision, he went forward with publishing the English
text understanding that it would be revised later, and
gave Mme. de Salzmann speci?c instructions to do so.
Most important, from a legal standpoint, he
empowered her to carry out his intention by a formal
contract, signed on July 1,1949, assigning all his
author’s rights with respect to “exploitation of his
literary work.”15 This assignment conclusively
authorized her to revise the book in his name.

Gurdjieff would never have made an unde?ned, blanket

assignment unless he knew that Mme. de Salzmann
understood how he viewed his writings and could be
trusted to publish them as he would wish. They must
have spoken about the last chapter of MEETINGS, which
is wholly out of character with the preceding chapters
and written in 1930, years after Gurdjieff began work
on the book. The translators’ note that the chapter
was not “originally intended” for the book should be
presumed to be correct. The same is true of the Third
Series, which on its face appears to have been
abandoned before completion. Mme. de Salzmann
certainly knew Gurdjieff’s view of the book, and her
statement that it is “incomplete, un?nished” deserves
the same presumption of correctness.

AN END TO WAR

THE HISTORY OF spiritual movements, notably

Christianity, is replete with instances of division, even
schism, arising out of competing sacred texts. We
humans seem prone to righteous outrage when we
argue for, and in the name of, the Prophet. My hope
here is that if we recognize that the author, in fact,
authorized two versions of his text, we, scholars and
followers, should be big enough to accept both,
without trying to impose one over the other. Such a
compromise has proved workable for the King James
and Revised Standard Versions of the Bible, which
co•exist, each with its own provenance and following.

At the same time, in seeking an end to hostilities, it is

right to acknowledge the serious missteps in publishing
the revised book, especially in letting the original
edition go out of print before launching the revision.
Although acceptable strategy for publishers generally,
this was inappropriate for a book that followers had
read for over forty years and understandably come to
revere. In effect, with more than twenty•?ve years
remaining in the copyright term, this action forcibly
prescribed the revised edition for future generations
and relegated the original to disappear over time. The
misunderstanding was aggravated by the failure to
explain the real reason for the revision, justifying it
simply on the grounds that the original version was dif?
cult to read and understand.

I am grateful for Professor Taylor’s generosity in the

term “muddling,” which leaves room to forgive human
missteps. Here, the muddling was distinctly American,
not French, and resulted from a well•intentioned
concern to make the revised edition truer to the
author’s meaning and more accessible, not a
deliberate disregard of other readers’ preference.
Accepting the objections, Triangle let the revised
edition go out of print and republished the original in
1999. Only after the original was reestablished did it
republish the revised version in 2006, this time with an
introductory note explaining why the revision had been
made. Today, both versions are available and, given
the valid provenances and preferences on both sides,
should be respected as authentic.

BEYOND “US AND THEM”

ONE SALUTARY RESULT of the competing books is the

A&E conference, which originated as a solidarity
movement of the original BEELZEBUB devotees.
Another, less happy result is the sense of rival identity
—i.e., “us and them”—that has developed on both
sides, as though we were enemies. Sophia Wellbeloved
called attention to this recently on her blog when she
queried: “Why was there ever this ‘us and them’
mentality? Why was it ever thought that Gurdjieff’s
pupils should all be in one institution or society?”16 In
my view, this was never part of Gurdjieff’s plan for
continuing his work, and the notion did not come from
Mme. de Salzmann.

As noted above, the creation of the “movements” and

the foundations between 1948 and 1952 suggests that
Gurdjieff had a de?nite plan for the continuation of his
work. But he had abandoned the dream of an umbrella
organization when he closed his Institute, and the
foundations were not set up as branches of a single
institution. Each had its own distinctive name,
different from the others, as well as a nucleus of senior
leaders who, especially in New York, were encouraged
to follow the Fourth Way on their own, independent
from the other foundations. Their only common af?
liation was their relation with Mme. de Salzmann,
which was formalized after her death by creating the
International Association of Gurdjieff Foundations.

Here, when we speak about “us and them,” it is

important to distinguish between an expression of
solidarity and one of exclusivity. There is a collective
identity that arises from working together, a cohesion
that is natural, even necessary, in practicing a spiritual
way with others. Each group has to be free to follow
and preserve without distortion the practice that has
been learned, as well as to be free to limit
participation to those who are compatible and wish to
work in the same way. And each, quite
understandably, will feel its way is the best practice
and have a sense of its collective identity, as the
foundations have done as a group since the beginning.
In the early years after Gurdjieff’s death, Mme. de
Salzmann called on followers to continue “Mr.
Gurdjieff’s work,” reminding everyone of his legacy
and the responsibility to work together in the search
for consciousness. Over time, members of the
foundations used the same term— capitalized and with
the preposition “in” —to refer to their collective
undertaking. To be “in the Work” was to participate in
the work together, acknowledging collective solidarity.
This, it seems to me, is entirely appropriate. There is
nothing inherently wrong in the foundations—or any
other group or groups—referring to their own
engagement as the “Work,” provided the sense of
collective solidarity does not lead to a sense of
exclusivity or complacent primacy, that is, a feeling of
superiority in living the teaching. At the same time,
the terminology sets up a distinction that is often
misunderstood. The foundations, for example, are
widely seen as exclusive and secretive, although, in
fact, they are neither. Members are simply following
Gurdjieff’s ?rst rule of the Fourth Way: not to speak
about work in groups, in order to avoid giving wrong
ideas that “shut others off from the possibility of
approaching or understanding anything in connection
with the Fourth Way.”17

It is important to note that, as separate “houses of

work” or Fourth Way centers, the foundations were
never intended to claim exclusivity or primacy in
following a teaching, which, after all, was meant for
humanity on a large scale. Gurdjieff set the future
course when, over the objections of his pupils, he
insisted before his death on publishing BEELZEBUB
rather than continuing private readings for a chosen
few. Mme. de Salzmann continued opening to a
broader following by publishing his Second Series,
MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN, in French and
English in 1960 and 1963, respectively. Ten years later
she released, in his name as the author, VIEWS FROM
THE REAL WORLD, consisting of talks which until then
had been largely limited to readings within the
foundations. Shortly thereafter, she also decided to
publish the Third Series, LIFE IS REAL, which until then
had not been made public.

The way in which Gurdjieff’s writings were published is

signi?cant for the care that was taken that they not be
viewed as sponsored by the foundations. For the ?rst
twenty•?ve years the responsibility was handled by Les
Editions Janus, an undisclosed agent of the French
founda•tion. In 1974 this responsibility was assumed by
Triangle Editions, also an unidenti?ed company, this
one controlled by the major foundations, which agreed
to pay substantially all the royalties to the Gurdjieff
family. As the books have been published throughout
the world over the past forty years, great care has
been taken to act, as it were, anonymously and not use
publishing to enhance the perceived role of the
foundations. When one foundation sought to announce
that Triangle represented the original centers for
carrying on the teaching, Mme. de Salzmann overruled
the implied claim of primacy.18

From the larger perspective of the Fourth Way, the

most important issue of exclusivity is the availability of
the esoteric aspect, the practice of the inner work for
consciousness. Gurdjieff transmitted the outer aspect,
the system of ideas, to Ouspensky and in talks at the
Prieuré and in New York, and approved the publication
of IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS. With respect to the
esoteric part, he af?rmed de?nitively that it was not
secret, not hidden, and even announced his intention
to disclose it in the Third Series. We do not know why
he abruptly stopped writing in 1935 and abandoned
that undertaking. But before his death he charged
Mme. de Salzmann to do “everything possible – even
impossible – so that what I brought will have an
action,”19 and told her to write down what she
brought. She faithfully did as instructed, writing in
notebooks, kept like diaries over a forty•year period.
Over the years she mentioned her book to her family
and closest friends, and at ninety•one remarked that
she was “writing a book on how to be in life, on the
path to take in order to live on two levels.”20 When
she died ten years later, she left the notebooks intact,
carefully preserved.

The publication of THE REALITY OF BEING, sharing the

material in Mme. de Salzmann’s notebooks, was
intended to make the practical, inner teaching
available to all followers, whether inside or outside the
foundations. The decision was taken by her family, who
knew what Madame thought of the foundations and
their role in the appearance of the Fourth Way. It was
based on her stated intention to publish a book and her
determination, demonstrated throughout her life, to
carry out Gurdjieff’s mission. Although not without
controversy within the foundations, this publication
was a continuation of the outward•looking
dissemination of the teaching, begun by Gurdjieff in
publishing BEELZEBUB and continued by Madame with
VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD and the Third Series. In
writing about “cosmic scale,” Madame af?rmed her
view that the Fourth Way could help strengthen the
relation between higher and lower levels of the
cosmos, but lamented: “It still involves only a limited
number of people, and this force needs to be felt on a
much larger scale of humanity.”21

We cannot, of course, do away with our all•too•human

tendency to discriminate between “us and them.” But
so long as we remember that “they,” the others, are
essentially like us—especially in our human aspirations
and limitations—we can see through the differences
and recognize that we are all part of a much larger
cosmic process of evolution. From this perspective, our
ordinary sense of identity is simply an obstacle to
seeing a reality in ourselves that is beyond form.
Speaking of the enemy, Pogo was right: “He is us.”

This article is slightly adapted from a paper presented

at the 2013 All and Everything International
Humanities Conference in Canterbury, England,
following a talk titled “French Muddling in All and
Everything,” by Paul Beekman Taylor.

ENDNOTES

1 Pogo Possum, an anthropomorphic comic strip

character created by cartoonist Walt Kelly (1913–1973).
This utterance is a parody of U.S. Navy Commodore
Oliver Hazard Perry’s report after the victory over the
British Navy in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie: “We have
met the enemy, and they are ours.”

2 Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch, GURDJIEFF—A MASTER IN

LIFE

(Toronto: Dolmen Meadow Editions, 2006), 246.3 James

Moore, GURDJIEFF / THE ANATOMY OF A MYTH(Dorset,
UK: Element Books, 1991), 299.

4 Paul Beekman Taylor, REAL WORLDS OF G.I.

GURDJIEFF(Utrecht, NL: Eureka Editions, 2012), 52.

5 Ibid., 57.6 P.D. Ouspensky, IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUS(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
Ltd.,1949), 36.

7 G.I. Gurdjieff, THE HERALD OF COMING GOOD (Paris:

1933), 46.8 Paul Beekman Taylor, “Inventors of

Gurdjieff” inGurdjieff International Review, vol.
VIII(1), (Fall2004), 39.

9 Jeanne de Salzmann, “Degrees of the octave” in THE

REALITY OF BEING (Shambhala, 2010), 183–84.

10 Ouspensky, op. cit., 8.

11 Thomas de Hartmann, OUR LIFE WITH MR.

GURDJIEFF (Olga de Hartmann, 1964), 123.

12 Ibid., 123.

13 Nicholas de Stjernvall, DADDY GURDJIEFF: PARIS

RUE DES COLONELS•RENARD, quoted in A&E
Conference 2003, 150.

14 G.I. Gurdjieff, VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD (New

York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1973), x. 15 Contract,

dated July1, 1949, between La Societé Editions Janus
s.a.r.l. and G.I. Gurdjieff

16 Sophia Wellbeloved, THE GURDJIEFF LITERATURE

2012 in gurdjieff2013.wordpress.com.

17 G.I. Gurdjieff, IN SEARCH OF BEING (Boston &

London: Shambhala, 2012), 143.

18 See Stephen A. Grant, Review of James Moore’s

EMINENT GURDJIEFFIANS: LORD PENTLAND, in
Parabola, vol. 36, no. 3 (Fall 2011), 122.

19 de Salzmann, op. cit., xiv.

20 Ibid., xvi.

21 Ibid., 200.

The statements in this essay are the personal views of

Stephen A. Grant and do not represent those of
Triangle Editions or the Gurdjieff foundations.